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Negro Organization Society

The Negro Organization Society was
a grassroots advocacy association that stressed community self-improvement for
African Americans in Virginia during the Jim Crow era. Founded in 1912 at the Hampton Institute by Robert Russa Moton, its motto
was "Better Schools, Better Health, Better Homes, Better Farms." Pursuit of these
four goals was considered essential to the protection and welfare of black citizens,
especially in rural areas where the great majority of Virginia's African Americans
lived. Over the years, the organization's actions shifted from building schools to
improving education by accrediting more institutions and improving teacher pay. By
the 1950s, when the Negro Organization Society had begun to dissolve, the fight for
African American civil rights had largely shifted from community and regional
organizers to the court system. MORE...

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The Negro Organization Society sought to combine the efforts of the state teachers'
association, local school leagues (the equivalent of contemporary parent-teacher
associations), church groups, fraternal organizations, and grand lodges. The society
was, in effect, an umbrella group for pre-existing African American community
improvement groups. There was a great deal of overlap in the leadership and
objectives of the individual groups that comprised the society as, in a time of
extreme racial hostility toward African Americans, unity in the pursuit of
community-improvement was considered essential. Characteristic of the racial
segregation of the time, the Negro Organization Society was the black equivalent of
the Cooperative
Education Association organized in 1904 for white Virginians. The white
group, however, received state support, while the black group obtained support from
fund-raising and northern philanthropies, especially the Anna T. Jeanes Fund.

To carry out its activities, the society had a
board, an executive director, and two paid field staff members. One of those field
agents was T. C. Walker from Gloucester, Virginia (he also was an agent of the Rosenwald School Building Program).
The leadership committee and the field agents operated out of Hampton Institute. They
planned annual meetings and education campaigns and dispensed grants for new or
improved schools to local school leagues or school committees. In its first decade of
operation—between 1912 and 1921—the society held organized annual meetings with
printed programs, resolutions, and recorded minutes.

The society's first priority at this time was to challenge and defeat the opposition
in both white and black communities to educating black children. The society
conducted "awareness campaigns" across Virginia from the Tidewater to the Shenandoah Valley in order to promote reading,
writing, and arithmetic training for young African Americans. These crusades were
held in large public spaces. With positive rhetoric of cooperation, prominent black
leaders argued that educating black children was in the mutual interest of both
blacks and whites. The society's crusades and ties to local school leagues
contributed to the growth of new school buildings and sanitary privies in this
period. Construction required the joint support of local school boards, private
philanthropy, and fund-raising contributions from the black community.

The Negro Organization Society shifted emphasis in the 1920s and 1930s, arguing that
educating black children required more than a mere school building. The society,
along with Jeanes teachers and school leagues, worked on increasing the length of the
school year, improving attendance, and providing school lunches. A constant theme at
its meetings was the need for better-prepared, better-paid teachers. The society
pointed to the need for more accredited high schools and for separate facilities for
the mentally retarded (who were often housed in county jails). In speeches and at
annual meetings, members of the Negro Organization Society became increasingly vocal
about the inequities blacks confronted.

In the last years of the Negro Organization Society's life, advocates for equal
rights turned to the courts for redress of education and voting grievances. Times
were changing; nonetheless, the society's decades of advocacy for equal educational
opportunities had brought black education in Virginia a long way. Though it remained
in existence for another couple of decades without funds, the Negro Organization
Society was purged from the state corporation commission in 1985.

Time Line

1912
- Robert R. Moton founds the Negro Organization Society, a grassroots advocacy association stressing community self-improvement for African Americans in Virginia during the Jim Crow era, at Hampton Institute.

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References

Further Reading

Jordan, Elizabeth Cobb, The Impact of the Negro Organization
Society on Public Support for Education in Virginia, 1912–1950, doctoral
dissertation submitted to the School of Education, University of Virginia,
Charlottesville (1978).

Moton, Robert Russa. Finding A Way Out. New York:
Doubleday, Page and Company, 1920.